Chinese sans 漢字
I've noticed lately on various fora that I frequent that a lot of people are wanting to learn Chinese and Japanese without learning the characters! They want to learn using only pinyin or kana. Many of the posts mention something about rote memorization of hanzi/kanji, and something about learning spoken Chinese/Japanese to an advanced level of fluency without hanzi/kanji (I'll just mention the Chinese side of things from here on, because slashes are annoying/a pain).
I don't really understand this. Chinese is written with characters! Not pinyin! So these people are in effect limiting themselves to textbooks for learners, and will never be able to read anything written in real Chinese. And we know how awkward textbook dialogues are (don't we?). Not to mention that very few (zero?) learners' resources avoid characters altogether past the beginning stage. So the person is limiting himself (don't get all up in arms...himself/herself is incorrect English, not to mention annoying/a pain, so don't take offense when none is intended) to awkward dialogues intended for beginners. How can he possibly expect to reach an advanced level?
Not to mention that rote memorization sucks! It's what Chinese schoolchildren do to learn characters, but it takes them years and years of school to learn them all! Fortunately, your choice isn't between rote memorization and no characters at all. Drs. Heisig and Richardson (both of Remembering the Hanzi fame), Drs. Matthews (of Learning Chinese Characters fame), Rick Harbaugh (of zhongwen.com fame), Mike Love (of Plecodict fame), 张朋朋 (of New Approaches to Learning Chinese fame) and plenty of other people have all simplified the process for you. Take your pick. Skipping the hanzi may seem like the easier path, but, ironically, in the long run it makes the process much more difficult.
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I don't really understand this. Chinese is written with characters! Not pinyin! So these people are in effect limiting themselves to textbooks for learners, and will never be able to read anything written in real Chinese. And we know how awkward textbook dialogues are (don't we?). Not to mention that very few (zero?) learners' resources avoid characters altogether past the beginning stage. So the person is limiting himself (don't get all up in arms...himself/herself is incorrect English, not to mention annoying/a pain, so don't take offense when none is intended) to awkward dialogues intended for beginners. How can he possibly expect to reach an advanced level?
Not to mention that rote memorization sucks! It's what Chinese schoolchildren do to learn characters, but it takes them years and years of school to learn them all! Fortunately, your choice isn't between rote memorization and no characters at all. Drs. Heisig and Richardson (both of Remembering the Hanzi fame), Drs. Matthews (of Learning Chinese Characters fame), Rick Harbaugh (of zhongwen.com fame), Mike Love (of Plecodict fame), 张朋朋 (of New Approaches to Learning Chinese fame) and plenty of other people have all simplified the process for you. Take your pick. Skipping the hanzi may seem like the easier path, but, ironically, in the long run it makes the process much more difficult.
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4 comments :
Ya, you're right on target here. Someone wanting to have conversations in chinese should expect to spend minimum of 1 or 2 years (depending on the level of "conversation"), and more if they want to get awesome. Out of 24 months, you only need to spend 1 or 2 of them learning maybe 1500 hanzi. Then you'll be able to read tons of stuff and you can slowly acquire more characters as you go.
Without learning characters, it means you're pretty much depending on other humans to feed you the whole language. Maybe if you live in china and can convince everyone to stop practicing english with you, then this might be possible. For the rest of us, we need books...lots of books. without books it's insanely difficult to get enough exposure to become fluent.
Plus, if you don't know characters, you miss the etymology of lots of words. There are tons of words that sound almost the same, but if you're reading them in a book they become very different (and many times easily guessable from the component characters).
Great post. I too was quite bewildered to read that some learners are choosing to bypass learning characters just because they think it will be easier in the long-run. Actually, I think it makes it more difficult in the long-run, as in my mind characters themselves are a lot easier to memorise given their depth of expression than boring latin letters arranged in syllables ala pinyin. Like most Chinese learners, I was first attracted to the language because of the characters, so I can't imagine what it would be like learning the language just with pinyin (quite boring probably...). I have also seen, particularly on online forums, a bizarre obsession with route learning and flash cards. Don't get me wrong, these tools are helpful as a supplementary method to help solidify that which you've already learnt, but I've never understood those who incorporate vocab lists and dictionaries into the bulk of their learning. IMO you'll never get to the heart of a language unless you expose yourself as many authentic texts as you can.
I agree that learning characters is important (and am well on my way to literacy).
I disagree, however, that "these people are in effect limiting themselves to textbooks". Far from it! While not everyone is able to access native speakers (that will speak other than English to them), there is a wealth of film and television out there on DVD. There are thousands upon thousands of hours of tv dramas, for instance.
If a learner never picks up characters, he "will never be able to read anything written in real Chinese". If, however, said learner uses the method that has worked for most literate Chinese--spend a few years becoming a fluent speaker, then start learning characters--I suspect it would work as well, even if it were not the most effective way.
This post has inspired me to pick up characters. I have been learning with purely pinyin for a year and a half, however all of my Anki flashcards have simplified/traditional chinese characters.
This post really struck a cord with me and I think it is something that has been nagging me for a long time. I think the folks that learn purely pinyin are missing out on a lot.
So, after all of this time, I think it is truly time to do it the right way. Hopefully what I learned thus far over this time will accelerate the process.
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